this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Tankless still uses gas and it won’t make the water coming out of your faucet instantly hot. If that’s what you are looking for you want a recirculating pump or two.
Can’t you do electric tankless?
You can, but not as a heat pump so you wouldn't get all the efficiency gains and it will very often end up being more expensive to run than gas tankless in the near term.
My coworker bought one and had to buy a new electrical panel because it required 45A of electricity to run it meaning 3 dedicated circuits at 120V (5400 watts!). IMO an electric tankless is the worst of both worlds.
The more and more hot water spouts you have the more expensive the tankless design is, especially for running costs and short life span. The recirculating with a water tank will last longer, cheaper running costs, and can be fitted in already existing infrastructure of water tank designed homes. In building a new home, it is possible to have tankless water heaters be better than water tanks. especially if you can use Solar Panels to make the running costs near 0.
You absolutely can... And for smaller homes they're great.
Gas is fairly cheap where I live so that should be okay I think. Don't tankless water heaters generally come with recirculating pumps?
If methane gas is cheap because you're in the US, don't count on it staying that way; there are a ton of export terminals under construction, and when completed, they'll raise domestic prices in the US to match those on the world market, which are 2-3x higher.
I'm not in the US, and tbh I don't really use a ton of hot water. I think a tankless would still be a good investment for me. I'll also end up getting an air-to-air heat pump probably with a gas furnace as a backup for the really really cold winter days.